2012-2013 Season

Broken and Entered

by Kurt McGinnis BrownRunning Time: 2 hours

September 26, 2012 toOctober 14, 2012

Studio TheatreDirected by Suzan Fete

Featuring Marti Gobel, Andrew Edwin Voss & Jonathan
Leslie Wainwright

WORLD PREMIERE! Wally and Vern have just moved back to
their family home in a crumbling inner city community. They
soon realize that in order to survive they need to "take what they
can get," literally. So each night they guiltlessly
burglarize houses in nearby upscale neighborhoods. When Wally falls
for a wealthy, attractive neighbor named Jamila, the two brothers
are forced to reexamine their perceptions of race while facing
demons from their childhood.

A staged reading of this play was presented in the 2009-2010
Montgomery Davis Play Development Series.

Videos

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Media Coverage

Chamber Theatre’s Emotional ‘Broken and Entered’

Thursday, October 4, 2012

by Harry Cherkinian, Shepherd Express;Vern and Wally, adult brothers who haven’t lived together in years, return to cohabitate in their childhood home following their mother’s death. Outside, the neighborhood is falling apart, despite appearances of gentrification. Inside, their grip on reality is crumbling even more so, despite the siblings’ effort to somehow make sense of their lives. It’s the ghosts of the past that haunt them, and they can be found in the interior of the brothers’ minds and in the exterior of the fading façade called “home.”

by Julie McHale, Waukesha Freeman; Milwaukee Chamber Theatre Company tries to encourage Wisconsin playwrights by staging their works. Each year, they produce a play by a local playwright, one Pulitzer-Prize winning work and a production in which they collaborate with a local college or university.

by Peggy Sue Dunigan, Postscript Performing Arts; Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s BROKEN AND ENTERED will definitely shatter the audience’s expectations at the conclusion. Similar to the glass window broken in the very first scene, when the audience waits through the blackness of a completely dark theatre before the cast enters on stage. The complex, richly nuanced world premiere production written by Kurt McGinnis Brown was featured at a play reading for MCT in 2010, and comes fully produced for their current season this fall courtesy of the Montgomery Davis Play Development Series.

by Paul Kosidowski, MilwaukeeMag.com; Windows aren’t the only things shattered in Kurt McGinnis Brown’s Broken and Entered, which received its premiere production at Milwaukee Chamber Theatre this weekend. While the first thing we hear is the splintering of glass and whispers in a dark room, the damage here has a deep history. The burglars at work here are brothers Vern and Wally, who are not your usual sort of thieves, given their haul usually includes things like dishware and other family’s framed snapshots.

by Matthew Reddin, Third Coast Digest; The first few moments of anything are critically important. So when Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s BROKEN AND ENTERED begins in total darkness, with a team of penlight-wielding burglars fumbling around on set, you know you’re in for something different than your average piece of theater.

by Dave Begel, OnMilwaukee.com; There is so much to like about this play. It's wonderful that Chamber is giving a shot to a local playwright, a far too rare happenstance in Milwaukee. The play also has a very interesting and unique story.

News

Performances drive Chamber Theatre's 'Broken and Entered'

Sunday, September 30, 2012

by Mike Fischer, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; Every home remodeling project is also about starting over, but I'll wager that nobody reading these words has taken this idea quite as far as Vern and Wally, the two brothers featured in Wisconsin playwright Kurt McGinnis Brown's "Broken and Entered."

by Matthew Reddin, Third Coast Digest; Milwaukee Chamber Theatre, through its Montgomery Davis Play Development Program, has brought a number of new plays by Wisconsin writers to the stage. The latest, Kurt McGinnis Brown’s Broken and Entered, opens Friday at the Broadway Theatre Center.

It's the economy, theater-goers: New plays ‘Broken and Entered’ and ‘Microcrisis’ differ in tone

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

by Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; Milwaukee theaters open two new plays this weekend that tackle stories of economic dislocation, but with distinctly different tones. At the Broadway Theatre Center, the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre presents the world premiere of Madison playwright Kurt McGinnis Brown's "Broken and Entered," a moody, intimate drama of brothers down on their luck who turn to burglary, and a rich woman who becomes involved with them.

by Mike Muckian; Madison playwright Kurt McGinnis Brown, like most authors, was originally counseled to write about what he knew. One of the results of that advice is “Broken and Entered,” a play with roots in his figurative as well literal experiences.